Fortunately for the Templars, as previously discussed, their power wasn’t based on good battle strategy. After their initial expansion, they very quickly amassed substantial wealth. As the Templars were forbidden from owning wealth, the order became very cash rich. Taking advantage of the order’s policy of absolute secrecy regarding its affairs, they started offering discreet financial services to pilgrims, such as bonded credit notes. A pilgrim taking the journey to the East could deposit their money at a Templar chapter-house in Europe and get an encoded note. That note could then be presented to any other Templar house and redeemed for cash again – minus a hefty fee. They also offered loans, and received a special Papal exemption from the sin of usury (charging interest).
As their cash reserves grew, they offered loans, mortgaged goods and properties, issued cheques on deposit accounts, and even minted currencies. They always took a cut, and that cut could be as much as 60% on some transactions. It wasn’t long before the Knights had so much wealth that they were able to lend Kings the money to conduct military campaigns. It is no exaggeration to say that they invented banking, and established it firmly throughout European civilisation. It was this wealth – and their special dispensation to leverage it into temporal power – that gave them their strength, and made them the companions of Kings. Richard the Lionheart, known as the Absent King because he spent just six months of his 16-year reign in the British isles, was a big fan of the Order, and often campaigned with them… even as his despised half-brother, John, was staying in their London chapter house.
King John. Even less popular than warts.
Quite simply, the Templars made themselves into an indispensable part of the European financial landscape, right up to the very highest levels. At their height, during the 13th century, there were over 160,000 Templars, of whom twenty thousand or more were full knights, which made them stronger than many countries at the time. The order owned not only castles and armies, but also entire chunks of country, complete with towns and cities, right across Europe. They had a large fleet of ships, tens of thousands of strongholds and castles, entire battalions of architects and builders, churches and cathedrals and even, for a while, the entire city of Cyprus. They were rich enough to bankrupt Kings if they wanted to – Edward II of England even had to pawn his crown jewels to them for a time. The Templar bankers literally had European society by the financial balls.
Financial power and military prowess are a heady mix, and the Knights quickly got a reputation quite different to the pious ideals that Hughes de Payens had started out with. In Europe, the Templars got the reputation of being swaggering bullies; in the Holy Land, they were known for politicking and playing dirty tricks. The undoubted friction between the Templars and the Hospitallers stemmed from more than professional rivalry – around the middle of the twelfth century, the Hospitallers foiled a Templar plan to betray an inconvenient Christian ruler to local Moslem forces. Meanwhile, back in France, the phrase “As drunk as a Templar” had become the universal metaphor for extreme inebriation, and right across Germany, brothels had become known as Templarhofs – Templar Houses.
After the collapse of the Crusader states in 1291AD, the militant orders were left in a strange situation. Their entire justification for existing – protecting pilgrims and the holy lands – had been removed, but their financial power was as great as ever. They had lost a lot of men and a number of territories, but on the other hand their outgoing costs had been slashed. For the European bases, it was business as usual. The goodwill engendered by St. Bernard de Clairvaux was now 150 years in the past now though, and the political landscape was very different.
Philip the Fair
King Philip II of France, known as Philip the Fair (for his hair colour rather than his ethics) was extremely ambitious, and resented the Templars’ power. When they refused him a loan towards the end of the 13th century, he became their devoted enemy, determine to have their wealth for himself. He had one Pope murdered for certain, and possibly also murdered the man’s successor, but eventually he got a puppet of his on the Papal throne in 1305, Pope Clement V. The Papacy was moved from Rome to Avignon in France, and the Inquisition with it.
Philip had Clement sign a document accusing the Templar Knights of all manner of institutionalised evil – blasphemy, trampling the cross, sodomy, worshipping a head named Baphomet, kissing each others’ bodies during initiation, witchcraft, and over a hundred other crimes. The Catholic Church nowadays admits that they were almost certainly all groundless. However, under its authority, Philip assembled a vast force of soldiers was secretly assembled across France, and on Friday, October 13, 1307, the entire Templar order in France were arrested in simultaneous dawn raids.
In theory.
In practice, Philip the Fair was not particularly popular, and many regional magistrates still respected the Templars. The order was forewarned, and only a fraction of its members were actually arrested. Whilst this included the Order’s leadership, many of the remaining arrestees were elderly or infirm, and it has been suggested that the Templars who stayed behind had volunteered to act as sacrificial lambs for the rest of the Order’s membership. Meanwhile, the Templar fleet – which had been in port on October 12 – had vanished into history, along with the Order’s treasure and most of its personnel.
Philip had the Inquisition torture confessions out of the arrested Templars, and finally, in 1312, forced Pope Clement to officially disband the Templars. Philip and Clement put pressure on the other European kingdoms to arrest and execute the ‘evil’ Templars, but most territories dragged their heels. Scotland, already excommunicated, welcomed all comers with open arms. Below the Scots, in England, Edward II did nothing except write to his sheriffs across the country telling them to stop the Templars roaming around – for three years – before holding a desultory investigation and letting almost all the Knights off. In Germany, the Knights turned up to court in full armour, to receive full pardons. In Portugal, the King simply renamed the Templars as the Knights of Christ and left it at that; in Spain, the Order’s members and lands were moved over to the Hospitallers instead.
Jacques de Molay (before burning)
The Order’s last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, had confessed under torture to the various charges, but he recanted in 1314, saying his only regret was lying about his men. Furious, Philip had him burnt at the stake on March 18, 1314 as he and Pope Clement looked on. Legend states that de Molay invited his murderers to join him in the grave within the year; certainly, Clement V was dead within a month, and Philip II died just six months after that.
For all Philip’s ranting and Clement’s obedient pressuring, all they really achieved was to disperse the Knights into the mists of history. The French crown grabbed ownership of the lands the Templars left behind, but never saw a penny of the Order’s fabled treasure. As to where the fleet ended up, where the Knights went, what happened to all that gold and what other secrets and treasures were carried off with it… Well, those are the kinds of questions which will inspire poets, dreamers and conspiracy theorists for eight hundred years – and counting.
I hear of these encoded notes, but have never seen one. No one I have asked knows how to view one. Any ideas on where to find a copy of these encoded financial documents